


Reminiscing

by SincereIrony



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angsty as God knows what, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bullying, Durmstrang, England - Freeform, Gellert needs a hug, Grindelwald - Freeform, Harry Potter - Freeform, M/M, Norway - Freeform, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, What Have I Done, Young Gellert Grindelwald, hungary - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29652942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SincereIrony/pseuds/SincereIrony
Summary: In which Gellert Grindelwald’s history gets a bit of a reveal, and the early life of the darkest wizard of all comes to light.
Relationships: None
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Reminiscing

January 22, 1882, was a day too cold for anyone to be outside, too cold to a point where every window in Budapest frosted over entirely and every animal who didn’t make it to warmth in five hours died where it stood. It was far too cold for life to go on, too cold for anyone to comprehend.

_Far too cold for any child in his right mind to be born._

But Gellert Grindelwald, stubborn baby he was, did it anyway and almost died in that cold, screaming and crying his way into the world as twilight fell. It was his own little ‘fuck you’ to the world, the first of many, because Gellert was but a few hours old that day and wasn’t developed enough to give a damn about what anyone thought about his birth.

Of course, the doctors had wanted him to be born a little later, his parents even more so, considering that no one wanted a baby to be born on one of the coldest days they’d ever faced.

And Gellert, predictably, had not, so he screwed them all over and came into the world nevertheless.

June 4, 1889, saw that stubborn-ass baby grow up into a fully functioning seven year old, all soft blonde hair, piercing, big ice blue eyes, and an unusual sense of dry humor that annoyed his parents more than his birth ever had. At seven, Gellert Grindelwald could read, write, talk very well for a little boy, and speak a solid three languages—his native Hungarian, Swiss German, courtesy of his great grandparents, and Norwegian (but not so fluently), because his parents had long decided that their boy was heading to Durmstrang four years later and he needed to learn his future school’s _lingua franca_ early on.

Áron and Katalin Grindelwald, each proud, magical, and happily married since 1879, raised their son in the center of Budapest, the base of the family for God knew how long by that point. There, Gellert grew up happy, living an idyllic little childhood that some may only dream of.

The boy spent his days running by the banks of the Danube, reading, tormenting the neighbors’ children and being tormented back, and all in all, growing up like any normal magical seven-year-old.

And as the seasons passed and little Gellert grew, so did his magic, fiery and plentiful and burning in his veins. His magic radiated power, and lots of it, seemingly another one of his ‘ _fuck you_ ’s to a world that tried to kill him off one January five years back. 

So with magic, happiness, loving parents, and a nice little life, the boy continued to grow up.

September 18, 1893, witnessed a now eleven-year-old Gellert Grindelwald whisked off to the Norwegian fjords and into the gigantic masterpiece that was Durmstrang. And there, the magic in his veins had a shit ton of use, flourishing and crackling with every new lesson he learned.

There, everyone had at least one label, and so it happened that Gellert managed to have two.

The first was ‘The German’, obviously taken from that surname of his that had literally nothing to do with his actual background. (And maybe from the fact that he was blonde, tall, ice blue-eyed and clearly not Scandinavian. Ah, _the_ _stereotypes_.) This one didn’t stick, and Gellert didn’t mind it that much at all from the ones he called friends.

The second was a cross between ‘bastard’, ‘smartass’, and ‘that damn Austro-Hungarian son of a… _well_ , Gellert knew better than to repeat what Durmstrang’s resident blockhead Radoslav Krum and his merry band of shitbags had to say about him, and he already got the point anyway. The second label didn’t stick for a number of reasons: the first being that only the bitter bunch of the school and Krum and Co. ever used it and the second being that it was why said Krum and Co. wound up in an unfortunate ‘accident’ staged by Gellert and his new friends.

Since neither label stuck around, Gellert was just _Gellert_ at Durmstrang, and that was that.

“Well, well, well,” one of his newfound allies had crooned not long after the ‘accident’, when Gellert’s power flourished freely and his magic began to find potential, “making yourself a home here, huh, Gell?”

“A home, hm?” he’d replied, casting a spell to make a hibiscus grow in the cool ground ahead, testing his limits and watching the power grow seven times larger than normal, “I suppose so.”

And so, when enlarging flowers and taking down bullies with friends had gotten boring, when he got to learning English and got his hands on _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ and began reading about the three Deathly Hallows, wondering if he could ever find such relics, Gellert found a second home.

March 23, 1899 marked the end of seventeen-year-old Gellert Grindelwald’s bliss at Durmstrang for good.

It had been night when _it_ had happened, when Gellert had been alone in the bathroom washing up to get ready to sleep. _It_ happened when a boy two years his senior with beer and brandy on his breath stumbled over and slammed him against the wall and groped at places where no hands had ever been allowed to be. _It_ had happened when Gellert, terrified out of his mind, screamed and tried to push him off to no avail, while those offensive hands grabbed at his skin, tore at his clothes as he kept saying _no, no, no, nem, nein, nei…_

_It_ happened when he lost control, and his magic went haywire, protecting him and materializing so brightly, terribly, and violently that _it_ tore his assailant into shreds.

Of course, he and the body parts were immediately discovered. The headmaster was notified. The board began to investigate.

And once they all banded together to accuse him of ‘dark experiments’, because the evidence they found pointed more to a dark, messed up satanic cult ritual than the accidental murder of Gellert’s near-rapist, the decision was made.

Gellert Grindelwald, no matter what he said, did, fought, or tried to help prove his innocence, was hastily expelled.

This time, he hadn’t given a ‘fuck you’ to the world. The world had given a ‘fuck you’ to him.

_Oh, how the tables turn._

When he returned to Budapest that April, suitcase in hand, traumatized, and lacking any idea of what to do next, his parents were horrified. It took a few weeks to tell them what had happened, to try and figure out a way to explain his plight as he brushed aside fears of being labeled ‘weak’, ‘cowardly’, ‘asking for it’, and everything in between, but somehow, Gellert, through shame and doubt and more tears than he wanted to admit, managed it.

God, he had never, _ever_ seen his parents so livid until then. And their fury had not been directed at him. Áron and Katalin, angry and upset at their world’s broken system that brought their son to a stupidly unfair expulsion, decided to send him away while they figured out what to do next. There wasn’t much they could do, but the Grindelwalds settled on whisking their Gellert, their dear, broken Gellert, off to England to an old friend— _Bathilda_ , who they nonchalantly referred to as his ‘great-aunt’ for the time being—while they contested his expulsion.

And so, Gellert Grindelwald packed his suitcase again and bid his parents goodbye, heading northwest to the isles of England all by himself, into the clutches of a woman he’d never met and a country he did not know.

January 28, 1975, saw ninety-three-year old Gellert Grindelwald behind bars in an Austrian prison, incredibly frail and cold and reminiscing of the life he’d had before Albus, before the war he had thrown himself into and torn up the world with, before he fought in that legendary duel that got him into prison for life.

He stared out the thin windows of his cell and watched frost creep slowly onto their bars, just like it had on every window and living being on the fated day of his birth. Outside that window, Gellert had a wintry view of the forest all around and a legacy; a daughter, fully grown for a while now, living in the same city he and his family had always lived, and a granddaughter now, teenage and brilliant and off at Hogwarts, breaking barriers and screwing the world over like he had in his faraway youth so many years ago.

_And so, Gellert kept watching the window, sitting and reminiscing of all that was before the drama that was his adulthood had been born._

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this ficlet I’ve posted. Comments and feedback are always appreciated. Let me know if you would like a sequel to this, another Grindelwald-themed ficlet, or something else to say.  
>  Signing off,  
>  -Irony


End file.
